


Finite

by VolxdoSioda



Series: Whumptober 2019 [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, Physical Disability, Pre-Brotherhood (Final Fantasy XV), Whumptober Day 3: Delirium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 04:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20886410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VolxdoSioda/pseuds/VolxdoSioda
Summary: Regis wonders how much more he will be made to endure.





	Finite

It’s raining. 

He thinks he’s supposed to be excited about that. Ignis seems to think so too, and even his dad and Gladio are encouraging him. But. 

There’s a hole in his chest. The hole where his heart was, the heart that the Maralith stole, that day when it tried to kill him. He can’t feel anything, anymore. It’s just… numb. He’s tired. 

“I want to go back to my room,” he says, and when Ignis hesitates, he puts his own hands on the wheels of his wheelchair, and maneuvers himself back towards his rooms. Where it’s cold and quiet, and he can be left alone without phantoms to bother him. 

“Prince Noctis, please--”

“Your Highness--”

“Noctis--”

Ghosts. Phantoms. He ignores them, and waits for the Kingsglaive to open the door, and then wheels himself inside, and locks the door behind him. 

As ever, Omen’s inside, waiting for him. Shuffling a deck of cards between elegant, pale fingers, looking out to the storm beyond the Citadel. Beyond the facade of protection he’s been told will keep him safe.

Nothing can keep him safe. Nothing ever has, nothing ever will. 

_ Back so soon?  _ Omen asks. He has no voice, but Noctis can hear him just the same. He’s tall, rail-skinny like Noctis, dressed in a Prince’s outfit. Omen has told him he’s Noctis, from a different world. A world where he grows up loved and unhindered. Where he can do whatever he likes whenever he likes, and his life is full of happiness. 

Omen has been by his side ever since the Maralith. That first time he woke up and he was alone, and then Omen was there, soothing him as he cried.

_ Don’t weep, little Prince. Things get better. They will, I promise. _

Everyone around him likes to pretend they can’t see Omen. It’s a joke, Omen tells him. A game between him and the King’s court. 

_ They like to think me inferior. I like to think of myself as superior. It works out.  _

So he ignores the looks everyone gives him whenever Noctis talks to Omen, and laughs at his jokes, and plays with him those few times he feels up to it. He doesn’t feel up to anything like that today, but Omen already knows that.

_ Come along little Prince. Tell me your woes.  _ Omen sits on the bed, and pats the space beside him. Noctis shakes as he gets out of his wheelchair, but he manages it, and sits on the edge of the bed, smiling at his friend. 

Before he can say anything though, there’s a knock on the door. Noctis frowns, debating answering it. 

_ Leave it, _ Omen decides for him.  _ C’mon, talk to me. What’s eating at you?  _

So Noctis talks, and ignores the knocking at the door, the sound of Ignis’ voice, frantic with worry, telling him he needs to take his medication.

  
  


X-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

  
  


His dad has made another appointment with the psychiatrist for him. Noctis hates it, begs Omen to accompany him. But Omen shakes his head.

_ This isn’t my fight, Noctis. Listen to your father. _

But Noctis hates the psychiatrist. Hates how she scribbles things on her pad no matter what he says. The appointments began shortly after the physical therapist came and saw him. Noctis doesn’t see the point - he’s perfectly sane. 

“Good morning Noctis,” the psychiatrist, named Dr. Kim, begins. “How are you and Omen doing today?”

Another thing he doesn’t like - Dr. Kim thinks Omen is  _ a fictitious fragment of the imagination, made to help him cope with his trauma.  _ Except he’s not traumatized, because the dead can’t be traumatized. She treats Omen like he’s not real, much the same as everyone else does, but on a much more condescending level.

He huffs at her. “He’s not here today. You know that.”

Dr. Kim smiles. Noctis hates the smile. How she treats him like he’s  _ broken,  _ like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “Of course. My mistake. How do you feel?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you in any pain today?”

His hip on the left side is hurting, but he’s not going to tell her that. She’ll probably attribute that to  _ being in his head  _ as well. “No.”

“Well that’s good. Are you enjoying school?”

She pesters him endlessly over the next hour, and Noctis answers in as few words as he can get away with. When it’s over, she gives him a lolly and says, “I just need to speak to your father for a quick moment. I’ll be right back.”

His father is waiting in the room outside, Cor beside him. He looks as normal as he can in the important suit he wears when he deals with the public, and practically leaps to his feet when Dr. Kim comes out to speak to him.

Noctis catches the words  _ venom side-effects  _ and  _ delirium.  _

He’s not  _ delirious,  _ he thinks bitterly. He’s in full control of his own head. They just want excuses to baby him after what happened. He doesn’t know what the venom part is about - he’s never been poisoned, or bitten, or whatever. He’s fine. Just fine.

He leaves the lolly on Dr. Kim’s desk, untouched, and wheels himself out when his father beckons. He looks worried, which is another reason Noctis hates the appointments. They always make his father sad. 

Lousy stupid doctors.

Cor wheels him back to the car, gently ruffling his hair as he helps Noctis into his seat before folding the wheelchair up in the back. After a few more moments, his dad gets in beside him, another bottle of those ridiculous pills in his hand. 

Noctis hates the pills. They make him feel tired, and they make everything around him too bright, too loud, too  _ vivid.  _ He tries not to take them unless he has no choice, and has been studying up on tricks so everyone thinks he’s taken them, even if he hasn’t. Iggy’s sharp though, and most of his attempts haven’t been successful. 

“Right, let’s get you home,” his dad says, and Cor starts the car. 

It’s a two hour drive both ways, given Insomnia’s traffic. The drive always makes him sleepy, especially given how early the appointments are. Noctis tends to fall asleep on the ride back, and today is no different.

When he wakes, he doesn’t know where he is. He’s in a car he doesn’t recognize, by himself, parked next to a curb where men are talking. Panic seizes him. Has he been kidnapped? Wait, had someone knocked him out? The last thing he remembers is talking to Dr. Kim. Something about Omen. 

Noctis unbuckles himself from the seat, and keeps one eye on the men - two, talking to a third, their backs to the door - as he undoes the lock on the door. Maybe if he’s quiet, he can sneak away. Get help. Find out where he is - where the hell his dad went. Someone must know he’s gone missing by now. Someone must be  _ looking. _

But the door clicks loudly when he opens it, and Noctis freezes as three pairs of eyes turn to him. One of the men, older, stately-looking, dressed in a fine suit (nobleman? Has he been kidnapped by his dad’s opponents? The ones who voice out against his decisions? Is this really what he’s dealing with?) smiles. “Ah, he wakes. Are you ready now, Noctis?”

They know his name. They know his name and they’re  _ smiling  _ at him, asking if he’s  _ ready-- _

“Don’t touch me,” he breathes as one, blond and tall and mean-looking, comes around and opens the door wider, reaching for him. He’s shaking in fear, but he’s not going to go quietly, no, they will have to  _ kill him  _ to learn anything about his father, “ _ I SAID DON’T TOUCH ME!” _

“Noc--” That’s as far as he gets as Noctis does as he was taught, twisting the hand reaching for him and shoving hard, putting distance between himself and his kidnapper as he hits the ground and  _ bolts-- _

Hands snatch him up before he takes more than a single step, and Noctis screams, fighting, shoving and clawing at the face of the men holding him, screaming and praying that somewhere close by there’s a Glaive, a Crownsguard,  _ someone-- _

_ “Noctis! Noctis, what’s--” _

_ “He’s having another episode! Get his medicine, in the car, the front seat--” _

The stately man runs to the car, while the other two fight to hold him. Noctis bites and claws, wrenching this way and that as he fights them as hard as he can. Then the stately man comes back, uncapping a needle and jabbing it down into Noctis’ thigh. There’s a flood of something that burns along his skin, and the two men hold him tighter as the needle is removed, the stately man moves back a few steps, and waits. 

Noctis keeps fighting, but his moves turn sluggish before long. A sensation of exhaustion sweeps over him, his head drooping, unable to stay upright. His legs go weak. He fights to keep his eyes open, but eventually that too is impossible.

He blacks out.

X-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

  
  


“What do you mean, ‘possible lifelong issues?!’ You said--”

“We have no direct cure for the Starscourge, Majesty. And Maralith venom-- we haven’t seen one of those beasts in damn near seventy years, sire. We have no records of what kind of damage the venom can do to the human body. If we had been able to get our hands on some, we could probably deduce what’s going to happen and cut it off at the pass. At best, we can only speculate. I’m sorry.”

Regis sits, hands coming up to cradle his throbbing skull. He reminds himself that getting angry at the doctors will do no good - it won’t bring about a magic cure for the fits and tantrums Noctis throws now, for the conversations he has with thin air. He insists there’s someone there with him always, a man he calls Omen, a man that is him, but older. Noctis insists he’s there, and Regis--

Regis has done his best to keep the facade up. Tried to be polite to imaginary men, tried to hold out when his son’s almost frothing at the mouth, screaming and howling like a thing possessed. When he forgets who Regis is, and tries to run, begging for the guards to help him. When he doesn’t know where he is, and thinks he’s been captured by one of the enemy. 

Now, Noctis lies asleep in a bed in the infirmary, an oxygen mask attached over his mouth and nose, an IV drip hooked up to his arm. It’s the only way to get him to take his medicine, anymore. He clawed Ignis the other day when his brother tried to force the issue, and he’s learned spots to tuck himself away to where nobody can find him so long as he stays quiet and unmoving. 

The medicine they give him is supposed to make the hallucinations stop, make the memory issues go away, or at the very least, it’s supposed to make them manageable. But now he’s seeing and hearing that it only goes so far, and that Noctis may be like this until the last day of his life, when the Accursed comes to claim the throne.

He can’t bear such a thought. Noctis is already going to have to give up his life for the good of all, why should what little life he has left be forced to be such an utter hell?

“Will he even remember who we all are?” Regis whispers. Clarus comes up behind him, as bitterly disturbed as he, and lays a hand on his shoulder. “Will he know the men traveling with him mean him no harm? Will he remember how we cared for and loved him as best we could? How we protected him, cherished him?”

Clarus says nothing. He, like the doctors, doesn’t have an answer. 

“Damn you, Bahamut,” Regis sobs as the tears start to fall, his hands coming up to hide his sorrow as best he is permitted. “Damn you all to Hell.”


End file.
